On Tuesday, June 29, 1999 9:00 AM Lee Daniel Crocker <lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net> wrote:
>> You know, regardless of the *current* state of Internet search
>> technology used by the government, your employer, and your health
>> insurance company, everything you post on the Internet *is* forever. I
>> really don't expect it to be all *that* long before somebody can run
>> automated searches like "Has my inner geek ever done anything illegal?"
>
>There has to be someone who wants to look as well, and there is
>some societal pressure against this. I've had an essay about
>hiring a prostitute on my web site for years, and the URL of my
>web site is on my resume. No employer has ever brought it up.
>I've made statements that are probably seditious more than once.
>Even before the internet, if someone wanted to find something
>incriminating about you, they probably could. If people whose
>ethics differ from mine want to avoid me because of what I have
>said or done, that's fine with me. I've found that most people
>who are only interested in trade don't care to look, and those
>who do look are probably friends, likely to agree with me.
Well, this is the problem with information. A lot of it is out there and people can look for it if they really want to know, but most people are comfortable (sometimes your truly falls for this trap too) not looking into things.
And regarding the ability to find all this stuff out from the internet, there is also a lot of noise out. I'm sure if the internet becomes a major place for individuals, government agencies, and companies to find out the poop about people in a major way, those who want to prevent this will create lots of noise, e.g., faked web pages and the like. Also, if someone wants to trash someone, they might do something like, for instance, http://gwbush.com/, which fooled many in the Press into thinking it was the official George W. Bush web site.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
See my new and amateurish site at:
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/